Recent advances in digital information processing have made a whole range of services and functions available for delivery to consumers at their premises. These services and functions include digital programming (movies, etc.), digital video-on-demand (VOD), personal video recorder (PVR), Internet Protocol television (IPTV), digital media playback and recording, as well as high speed internet access and IP-based telephony (e.g., VoIP). Other services available to network users include access to and recording of digital music (e.g., MP3 files), as well as local area networking (including wire-line and wireless local area networks) for distributing these services throughout the user's premises, and beyond.
Currently, many of these services are provided and delivered to the user via a wide variety of different equipment environments including, inter alia, cable modems, Wi-Fi hubs, Ethernet hubs, gateways, switches and routers, computers, servers, cable set-top boxes, PSTNs, cellular telephones/smartphones, PDAs, and portable digital music devices such as the Apple iPod™. Additionally, the services associated with such technology are typically provided by multiple vendors including e.g., a cable service provider (e.g., MSO), cellular service provider, wireless service provider (WSP), VoIP service provider, music download service, Internet service provider (ISP), PSTN telephone service, etc.
A typical local area network (LAN) allows a user to connect a variety of devices to a single internet connection and to provide connectivity over the LAN between devices, e.g., a printer shared by several computing devices. The number of devices that are able to connect to a LAN is increasing. For example, security system devices can be connected to the LAN and controlled both locally via the LAN and remotely via an internet connection. From a technical perspective, any device can be made network connectable.
The myriad of services, equipment and providers can easily create confusion and economic inefficiency for someone using many of these services on a regular basis. In particular, a user may have to pay for each service or equipment separately, thus eliminating any economies of scale based on integration. Additionally, the equipment or services may not interoperate with one another, thus reducing the overall utility provided to the user, and increasing user frustration. These problems are particularly acute when the number of different services utilized (and hence number of service providers) is high. The user must also typically learn and recall a number of different user interfaces on a regular basis. For example, a cable TV electronic program guide (EPG) or navigator will use different menus and features than an EPG on a PDA, which will be different than an EPG on a PC, which will be different than those on their telephony system, and so forth.
Additionally, the lack of a common interface poses significant challenges to service providers providing maintenance and updating services. Because today's customer premises equipment cannot communicate through a common interface, service providers have only limited capabilities to perform remote configuration, provisioning, monitoring, and troubleshooting of such equipment.
Some improvements in digital service integration have been made over time. For example, cable system subscribers can now access VOD, PVR, PPV and broadcast services simultaneously, access the Internet via a cable modem, and send and receive telephone communications digitally (e.g., VoIP). However, these functions are still substantially disparate in terms of their hardware and software environments (i.e., the user must have a cable modem, set-top box, VoIP telephony unit, PC, etc.), and “cross-over” between the environments (e.g., moving content or data from one environment to the other) is quite limited.
Furthermore, conditional access (CA) paradigms currently in use are quite restricted, and not generally extensible beyond the user's set-top box. So, for example, the user would be prohibited from transferring streamed or downloaded content to their Wi-Fi enabled laptop or PC, since compatible conditional access support does not exist in these devices.
One approach for distributing digital services to and within a user premises is described in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/378,129 entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Centralized Content and Data Delivery” filed Mar. 16, 2006, which application is incorporated herein by references for all purposes. A remotely manageable premises device acts as a centralized client networking platform providing gateway services as well as traditional content and high-speed data delivery functions. The device also acts as the shared Internet connection for all devices in the premises via a cable modem or other such interface, facilitates sharing personal and DVR content such as video, music and photos (and any associated metadata) throughout the premises, and provides both a wired and wireless network in the home. Telephony services utilizing embedded multimedia terminal adapter (eMTA) and/or Wi-Fi architectures may also be provided via the device.
The home media server/residential gateway apparatus (sometimes referred to herein as a “gateway”) may also provide a trusted domain for content or data, as well as allowing a subscriber total mobility in the home by not limiting content or data to any one viewing/access location. For example, content or data may be accessed on any monitor in the premises, as well as on a PC or personal media device. Such a home media server/residential gateway device provides a converged services platform that provides a subscriber a single platform from which to receive and manage one or more services through one or more devices.
A gateway may also provide the ability to configure the devices of a subscriber premises media system from a single interface. For example, the gateway may include a high speed data and video programming component for receiving data from external sources and wireless components for establishing a wireless network within the subscriber's premises. The gateway may employ multiple processors to provide services to the subscriber. The subscriber typically interacts with the gateway through a user interface that utilizes a common set of instructions that is run by each of the processors in the gateway and that includes links to the other processors. By way of illustration and not by way of limitation, the common set of software instructions may be an HMTL-based Web page that displays a GUI on a browser. When a subscriber operating the browser selects a particular function for the gateway to perform, the selection directs the browser to the processor tasked with the selected function. Because each processor executes the common instructions, as the number of processors increases, so does the complexity of the linkage among the various processors.
FIG. 1 illustrates an architecture of a gateway operating two processors. In this architecture, processor A 130 operates a web server A 125 that executes common software instructions to produce a Web page 128 that is served to browser 125 operating on user device 115. Processor B 165 operates a web server B 160 that executes common software instructions to produce a Web page 163 that is served to browser 125. For example, a subscriber accesses web page A 128 associated through browser 125 to select a function that is managed by either processor A 130 or processor B 165. If the selected function is assigned to processor A 130, the function is performed by processor A 130. However, if the selected function is performed by processor B 165, the Web server A 125 executes link 135 to redirect browser 125 to web server B 160 and the function is performed by processor B 165. By way of illustration, the management operation may be identifying a destination for saving multimedia files uploaded by the subscriber from a computer via a wireless network or may be the configuration of an access point that is part of wireless network.
While FIG. 1 illustrates the use of a Web server, Web page and browser to provide an interface to a user, these elements are illustrative only and are not intended to be limiting. The operations described herein are equally applicable to other interface architectures that provide communications between the gateway 200 and a user of that gateway.
While FIG. 1 illustrates two processors, the gateway may utilize any number of processors. Each of these processors will operate a web server that executes the common software instructions to produce a Web page that is served to browser 125. Any change to the common software instructions, even a change that is particular to a single processor, requires that the common software instructions be changed in each of the web servers associated with each of the processors and that all of the functionality be tested prior to commercial release of the common software instructions.